DC Comics’ Justice League Dark, the three characters in the centre – Deadman, John Constantine and Zatanna – are named in Guillermo del Toro’s pitch.

According to Latino Review, Guillermo del Toro’s giant robot movie Pacific Rim has met with so much wild approval at Warner Bros that he’s been offered his pick of projects, and according to the site’s industry insider, “Fortunately, he passed on the feature version of V and the sequel to Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, but he does want to do his own version of the Avengers, just supernaturally.

“Called Heaven Sent, he is combining all the magical beings from DC Comics in one epic adventure. Deadman, The Spectre, Swamp Thing, [John] Constantine Hellblazer, Phantom Stranger, Zatanna, Zatara, and Sargon as well as Etrigan the Demon will team up to no doubt save us from the Stay Puft Marshmallow man. Now this one is a ways away, but Warner’s lawyers have been working every night trying to clear the rights to all these characters.”

This gels nicely with the core line-up of the current DC New 52 title Justice League Dark – Deadman, Zatanna and Constantine – who make for the best POV characters out of the lot. Can you imagine The Spectre or Phantom Stranger as a protagonist? The power differential is just too great for any compelling drama.

Another point of reference would perhaps be Neil Gaiman and John Bolton’s The Books Of Magic miniseries, in which a pre-Harry Potter bespectacled boy wizard is inducted into the supernatural side of the DC universe by The Phantom Strange, Mister E, Doctor Occult and John Constantine, meeting characters as disparate as the aforementioned batch, as well as the likes of Doctor Fate, Doctor Thirteen, Destiny, Death and Dream of the Endless, and more.